KL%202010%20South%20Korea%20Gender%201AC

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Contention one: Inherency

Sex-slave trade crackdown not effective- Laws are being circumvented
Maclean’s February 22, 2010 “South Korea takes on prostitution,” accessed July 18, 2010, lexis
In 2004, the South Korean government enacted new laws designed to crack down on the country's sex trade, which by some estimates accounted for a whopping 4.1 per cent of GDP. To some extent, those regulations were successful: according to the Korean Women's Development Institute, a think tank dedicated to researching women's issues in South Korea, the sex trade now generates approximately 1.6 per cent of GDP, or about $14 billion annually (by comparison, South Korea's agriculture industry accounts for roughly three per cent of GDP). But Sealing Cheng, an anthropologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who specializes in sexuality, prostitution and human rights in South Korea, argues the government's efforts don't always work as intended. While the sex trade laws target pimps and brothel owners, and offer financial and vocational assistance for victims of prostitution, they also establish fines and jail terms for the approximately 269,000 sex workers in the country. "It makes life difficult for a lot of women who, for some reason, remain in the trade. If there isn't adequate assistance for them, they won't leave." The crackdown is also forcing prostitution further underground. When illicit massage parlours are raided, they often reopen as "hostess bars," where women are paid for their company but don't specifically have to sleep with clients, although they often do. "They're moving too quickly for the government to shut them down," says Whasoon Byun, a researcher with the Korean Women's Development Institute.
Cheng says the sex trade remains such a big problem largely because the government incorrectly believes it can stop prostitution by force, and that little will change until women are no longer treated as second-class citizens. "Even with a university degree it's very hard [for women] to find a job."
Eliminating troops key-Troop presence will empirically continue exploitation
Brian parsons, J.D. Candidate, Northwestern University School of Law; B.A. in Communication , 5/06, “Significant steps or empty rhetoric? Current efforts by the United States to Combat Sexual Trafficking near Military bases”, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v4/n3/5/?title=Significant+Steps+or+Empty+Rhetoric%3F+Current+Efforts+by+the+United+States%0D%0Ato+Combat+Sexual+Trafficking+near+Military+Bases&author=Brian+Parsons&pagination=&startpage=&endpage=&issueTitle=&issueDate=May+2006&vol=4&n=3&jTitle=Northwestern+University+Journal+of+International+Human+Rights&cite
In essence, sex trafficking near military bases boils down to a supply and demand issue. While initiatives such as the United Nations Protocol on Trafficking in Persons and the Trafficking Victims Prevention Act9 may be useful in persuading countries to combat trafficking within their own borders, the host country alone has the power to influence the supply of trafficked women available near military bases. But no matter how hard a country attempts to limit the influx of trafficked women into their country, as long as U.S. military bases are creating a strong demand for prostitution and trafficked women, organized crime will find a way to meet that demand. This is not a unique problem of the United States and its military. As long as there have been armies and wars, there have been prostitutes near military bases to service the sexual demands of soldiers.10 But, while the United States pledges to combat trafficking worldwide, these actions threaten the credibility of the United States and help to fund organized crime.11


Thus the plan: The United States federal government should remove its military and police presence in (or from)South Korea.


Advantage One: Prostitution
South Korea is a hot spot for prostitution. People from many countries are coerced into prostitution at camptowns.
Korea Times, June 17, 2010, “Human trafficking severe in Korea :US,” lexis
But the Korean government's efforts and the actual state of affairs are completely at odds. In its initial words, the TIP Report on South Korea revealed that South Korea 'is a source, transit, and destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor, and women and girls in forced commercial sexual exploitation. 'The report also said that men and women from Southeast Asian countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Morocco, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia are forced into prostitution or mandatory labor when they come to Korea for jobs. The TIP report especially criticized Korea for allowing women from countries such as Russia and Uzbekistan who enter Korea via entertainment visas, including those 'recruited to be singers and bar workers near U.S. military facilities,' to be trafficked for forced prostitution.
US endorsement of illegal prostitution in South Korea furthers the exploitation of women
Katharine Moon, Department of Political Science and. Edith Stix Wasserman Chair of Asian Studies Wellesley College, march-april 1999, “South Korean Movements against Militarized Sexual Labor”, Asian Survey volume 39 no. 2
Furthermore, kijich'on women have not been as mobile or "free" as people commonly have assumed. They are beholden to their club owner/manager/ pimp through what human rights activists call the debt bondage system, whereby they accrue debts to their clubs and must work to pay them off before they can leave. The system is premised on exploitation because club owners will often rent a room and purchase furniture, clothing, cosmetics, and music systems-all deemed necessary for the woman to attract GIs- before the new woman even arrives at his/her club but charge her with the debt at usurious rates. Illegal job placement agencies also charge women with a "referral fee" for putting her into a new bar and will expect her to pay.14 In most cases, the women do not have the funds and will borrow from the new employer, who will in turn raise her debts. If a woman tries to leave the club without having paid the debt, the manager/owner will send out thugs, stickyy boys,"15 to bring her back. In 1988, Mal Magazine reported that on the average, the sex workers' club debts ranged between one and four million won ($1,462 and $5,847, respectively, based on 1988 rates).16



US military presence in the US puts forces in a dominant position over sex workers
John Lie, Assistant Professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, june 1995, “The transformation of sexual work in 20-th century korea, gender and society volume 9, no 3, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/190058.pdf
The Japanese defeat in the Second World War ushered in a period of political turmoil. The superpower conflict divided Korea into the Soviet-backed North and the U.S.-supported South. The Korean War (1950-53) confirmed the United States' influence over South Korea; after the war, Korea was a poor agrarian nation dependent on U.S. aid. The traditional ruling, yangban, class largely lost its basis of power after the sweeping land reforms of the early 1950s. In this context, the most powerful group was the U.S. occupation force. The demise of one colonial power brought in another external power.
The U.S. dominance in Northeast Asian geopolitics ensured the privileged position of American soldiers (virtually all men in 1945) in the domestic sexual economy of South Korea. International political economy, in other words, played a major role in shaping domestic gender relations and sexual work. Under U.S. dominance, the primary organization of sexual work catered to American soldiers stationed in Korea. In the colonial period, Korean women served Japanese colonizers; in the postwar period, they entertained American GIs. The comfort divisions disbanded after the war, but prostitutions survived in a different guise to serve U.S. soldiers. The liberation of Korea did not liberate kisaeng or wianbu.



The thousands of women trafficked from overseas are coerced into prostitution as a result not only of their gender but also of their race.
Third World Network, Kanaga Raja, 9/02 “Women former Philippines and former USSR trafficked into south korea
Over 5,000 women, mainly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union, have been trafficked into South Korea for the sex industry since the mid-1990s, with the largest employers of Filipino women being bars located near US military bases, according to new research published by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
The IOM's research report, titled 'A Review of Data on Trafficking in the Republic of Korea', reveals that increasing numbers of trafficked women are entering South Korea since that country's economic recovery in 1999 to service a growing sex industry.
According to the report, authored by Dr June Lee, a former IOM Seoul Chief of Mission, the largest employers of Filipino women are bars located near US military bases. These women are recruited by the traffickers for their proficiency in the English language and are admitted into South Korea on 'E-6 Entertainment' visas. As many as 1,000 Filipino women were estimated to be working in US military bases in 1999.
The report details interviews with trafficked women who describe their recruitment by agents, the false contracts that lured them and the exploitative working conditions that they endure in an industry characterised by entrapment and intimidation.
The report notes that based on official statistics and published reports, up to 5,000 women could have been trafficked into South Korea for the sex industry since the mid-1990s.
However, there is reason to believe that the actual number may in fact be higher. The report highlights that researchers have been hampered in their efforts on what to measure to estimate the true scale of trafficking in South Korea due to the fact that there is not a clear or consistent definition of trafficking in South Korea.
The lack of precise terminology and definitions of trafficking in South Korea remains an ongoing and serious problem. This lack of a unified legal definition of the crime of trafficking makes it unlikely that an adequate analysis of the phenomenon or uniform preventive and punitive policies will be established in the near future, the report notes.
The report finds that women trafficked into the South Korean entertainment industry endure working conditions that clearly exploit them and there is also a present and real threat of violence if any of these women do not perform exactly as instructed. Moreover, other human rights violations are widespread, including illegal confinement, forced labour and even forced prostitution.
Filipino women are especially prone to sexual exploitation as their English language skills make them attractive to American service men interested in purchasing sex. However, women of other nationalities are also sexually exploited since foreign workers are often easier to intimidate than local Korean women.
In July 2001, the US State Department, in a report on trafficking in persons, classified South Korea as one of 23 countries that did not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, under the terms of the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.
The South Korean government meanwhile charged that the US report negatively portrayed Korea and was not based on adequate review of the country's situation. The Korean government, in rebuttal to the report, among others, pointed to several articles in its criminal law that heavily punished those involved in the sale of human beings for prostitution.


Korean prostitution is the nexus of Racism and Sexism.
Katharine H.S. Moon, Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, 1999 (Gender Camouflage women and the U.S. Military, Francine D’Amico and Laurie Weinstein, http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/KMoon/camouflage.pdf, pg 212)
Racist norms and myths prevalent in American society have also helped induce and even justify sexual abuse of women through military men’s participation in prostitution. I interviewed a U.S. Army chaplain in the spring of 1994 who stated: What the soldiers have read and heard before ever arriving in a foreign country influence prostitution a lot. For example, stories about Korean or Thai women being beautiful subservient – they’re tall tales, glamorized….U.S. men would fall in lust with Korean women. They were property, things, slaves….Racism, sexism – it’s all there. The men don’t see the women as human beings – they’re disgusting, things to be thrown away….They speak of the women in the diminutive. One Navy man I interviewed in the spring of 1991 commented that some officers would tell their men that prostitution is part of Asian culture and that Asians like prostitution.


US military life supports hiring prostitutes and degrading women—and prostitution is not a choice. Those who refuse to participate are raped.
International Feminist Journal of Politics, volume 6, number 3, 2004, “A feminist exploration of military conscription: The gendering of the connection between nationalism, militarism, and citizenship in South Korea”, http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/147045_731197592_713767489.pdf
Yet the close connection between being a real man and conscription is also related to class distinction. One reporter mentioned that among powerless people it is seen as very hard to keep a social life without finishing national defense duty. In other words, the exempted man has to overcome public suspicion about his able-bodiedness, masculinity, and social ability (Joongang 20 August 1997). However, this phenomenon varies with class. Among the élite, exemption has nothing to do with future welfare because their power can overwhelm any possible disadvantages. Another more hidden aspect of conscription’s construction of masculinity is the connection between military service and specific modes of masculine sexuality. Prostitution exists as an undeniable accessory of military lives, which enables conscripted soldiers to build gendered concepts that easily define women as subordinate and as a commodity. Seongsuk Jo describes how newly conscripted soldiers are forced to recount exaggerated and even violent sexual experiences to their superiors, and learn quickly that the commercialization of women’s bodies and the normalization of sex with prostitutes are part of the ‘natural’ culture of conscripted men (Jo 1997). Pilhwa Chang and Hyong Cho (1991) analyze how this sexual culture uses sex as a disciplinary tool, homogenizing individual conscripts from diverse backgrounds and transforming them into soldiers who will obey orders in the army. Yet the consequences spill outside the boundaries of the military itself. As a former student activist put it: ‘My wife said that I really changed after military service. According to her, I became wicked and did not have much innocence. In fact, I learned for the first time in the army how to see women as a sexual plaything and commodity and was surprised that it is common sense in our society’ (Jubeom Yi 1994). Nevertheless, the connection between militarized masculinity and the sexual exploitation of women is not self-evident. Awareness of the possible connection between sexual culture and conscription was very low among my student activist interviewees. When asked for reasons for the high frequency of sexual violence, which has been claimed to be the highest in the world, most of those activists I interviewed failed to suggest conscription as a possible reason, despite the fact that they were aware of the high frequency of sexual violence. Interviewees did not link sexual violence to the three years of common group experience during conscription time, which is the experience of most adult men in South Korea. After interviewees’ own analyses of the high frequency of sexual violence against women, I asked: ‘Have you ever thought men’s three years of group experience in the military can be related to the unusual high frequency of sexual violence?’ Sangin Kim’s response was typical: Well, I never thought of it in that way. But it seems like they are very related. Visiting 588 [ a famous prostitution area located near Cheongnyangli Train Station in Seoul] or Yeongdeungpo [ another prostitution area near Yeongdeungpo train station in Seoul] has been men’s custom before joining the army or on vacation in the army. It seems like the connection is quite close. (9 September 1998, Seoul) Kyeongsuk Yi answered: Yes. It seems like they are related. It has been a custom to buy women [prostitutes] for friends who are joining the army, after getting totally drunk. Brothels are always near soldiers. Even all of the waitresses in tearooms sell their bodies. Men are so used to buying sex. If it were not possible, they would rape. There is no circumstantial pressure to feel guilty if men rape women. (31 August 1998, Seoul)


Women are humiliated and rejected from society after prostitution in camptowns
Katherine H.S. Moon, Professor Department of Political Science @ Wellesley College, ‘97, “Sex among allies”
The vast majority of these women have experienced in common the pain of contempt and stigma from the mainstream Korean society. These women have been and are treated as trash, "the lowest of the low," in a Korean society characterized by classist (family/educational status-ori- ented) distinctions and discrimination. The fact that they have mingled flesh and blood with foreigners (yangnom)4 in a society that has been racially and culturally homogeneous for thousands of years makes them pariahs, a disgrace to themselves and their people, Korean by birth but no longer Korean in body and spirit. Neo-Confucian moralism regarding women's chastity and strong racialist conscience among Koreans have branded these women as doubly "impure." The women themselves bear the stigma of their marginalization both physically and psychologically. They tend not to venture out of camptowns and into the larger society and view themselves as "abnormal," while repeatedly referring to the non-camptown world as "normal." Once they experience kijich'on life, they are irreversibly tainted: it is nearly impossible for them to reinte­grate themselves into "normal" Korean society. Kim Yang Hyang, in the documentary The Women Outside, recalls how her family members rejected her when she returned to her village after working for a time in the kijich'on. One of her cousins told her, "Don't come around our place."5As a result of the rejection by their own countryfolks, the women (except the very old) keep their eye on the prize: marriage to a U.S. ser­viceman. As the legal wife of a U.S. soldier, her hope is to leave behind the poverty, shame, and alienation experienced in Korea and begin life anew in the United States. As a wife and mother, she hopes to fulfill all the obligations and dreams that her country expected of her as a Korean woman but denied to her as a kijich'on prostitute.


US policies force gynecological exams on not only prostitutes but women who are near military bases- result in psychological trauma.
Moon 97, Katharine H.S., Department of Political Science and Chair of Asian Studies @ Wellesley College, “Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S./Korea Relations”, ‘97, Columbia University Press
This kind of casual conclusion warrants the following observations: it is unlikely that women who had grown accustomed to regular gyneco­logical and blood examinations and attendant injections would have reacted "hysterically" at the sight of a needle. Second, it is ironic, not to mention irresponsible, that medical officials so intent on making Korean physicians observe "sound medical practices" paid scant attention to the possibility of serious side effects ensuing from the recommended high doses of medication and permitted some medically "unscientific" and "unwarranted" practices to continue at the expense of the women's health.
Across the board, camptown prostitutes detested the mandatory VD examination system and its heightened enforcement because they felt they had more to lose than gain from it. First, they found the exams deeply humiliating. The women I interviewed repeatedly used the word "shame" and "dread" to describe their feelings about VD exams. A USFK com­munity relations officer then active in VD control in Uijongbu pointed out that some of the "smarter women" told him that forced VD exami­nations amounted to a violation of their human rights.7 He noted that these women especially took offense at being harassed by U.S. military police to show valid VD cards and be examined by U.S. medics. They charged that their rights as Korean citizens were being infringed: "We're Korean. Why are American doctors and police checking us?"8 On the other hand, one woman asserted that some prostitutes would have preferred being checked by Americans because given that Americans were foreigners and that "normal" Koreans despised these women, it was more embarrassing to expose their genitals to Korean nationals.9 Although most prostitutes felt that they had no choice but to comply with stringent VD regulations in order to enter bars and clubs and attract GIs, they believed the system did not benefit them. Some women were known to have questioned the medical validity of a VD prevention system that focused only on women: "Why are the authorities cracking down on us? American GIs are half the problem."10Second, for the women, the most burdensome aspect of stricter VD control was financial. They were obliged to pay for the VD exams and any medical treatment out of their own pockets. Given that they were forced to hand over to the club owner about 80% of the money they earned from selling sex and drinks to GIs, they often lacked enough money to pay for VD checks and adequate treatment. If detained in the suyongso (detention center), women were unable to work for a period of 4 to 10 days on the average, while some were required to stay for a month.11 Until their infection cleared, they could not be released; conse­quently, they could not earn income but were nevertheless, in many cases, required to pay for their medical expenses.12 Often, a woman had to bor­row money from her club owner to treat medical problems, which in turn increased her club debts. Outside the clubs, the Korean police were all too eager to stop Korean women in the streets. Women who wore more make-up than others, women who walked with servicemen or were near a base, unaccompa­nied by U.S. personnel, even though they were not prostitutes, were all subject to random checks of VD cards by Korean police and health inspectors. In 1971, the Chief of Songt'an Police stated that w[t]he prob­lem is that KNP, Korean health agents and women inspectors have no way of determining who is an unregistered streetwalker, Korean citizen or U.S. dependent."21 Consequently, the tendency was to treat all women as prostitutes or potential prostitutes. Such actions date back to earlier attempts in different societies to control military prostitution; the enforcement of the British Contagious Diseases Act of the 1860s and U.S. federal legislation regarding venereal disease containment during World War I translated into the assumption that any woman found near military camps is a prostitute and therefore subject to gynecological examina- tion.22



Although this is a gross violation of human rights, the military may engage in discriminatory practices without legal restriction
Reiter 99-(Elizabeth, “The Department of Defense DNA Repository: practical analysis of the government’s interest and the potential for genetic discrimination,” Buffalo Law Review, Spring 1999)
Without any laws to proscribe genetic discrimination, no legal deterrent exists to prevent the military from engaging in discriminatory acts. To the contrary, the military is one of the few employers in the United States who may engage in discriminatory practices with little or no interference from the judiciary. n359 This situation exists because the United States Constitution grants Congress express authority to "raise and support Armies..., to provide and maintain a Navy... to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." n360 In addition to recognizing Congressional authority over the military, many courts are reluctant to interfere with the " "strong historical' tradition supporting "the military establishment's broad power to deal with its own personnel' " since they consider themselves incapable of acting in a realm dominated by military experts. n361 As a result, courts give great judicial deference to Congress when addressing military rules or policies. n362
US involvement in sex trafficking contradicts US efforts against human trafficking
Brian parsons, J.D. Candidate, Northwestern University School of Law; B.A. in Communication , 5/06, “Significant steps or empty rhetoric? Current efforts by the United States to Combat Sexual Trafficking near Military bases”, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v4/n3/5/?title=Significant+Steps+or+Empty+Rhetoric%3F+Current+Efforts+by+the+United+States%0D%0Ato+Combat+Sexual+Trafficking+near+Military+Bases&author=Brian+Parsons&pagination=&startpage=&endpage=&issueTitle=&issueDate=May+2006&vol=4&n=3&jTitle=Northwestern+University+Journal+of+International+Human+Rights&cite
Trafficking in persons has emerged as one of the most serious problems facing the world today. Somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked each year across international borders.1 Most of the people trafficked are women and children and these numbers do not reflect the millions of people who are trafficked within their own countries.2 Sex trafficking often takes hold in poverty-stricken countries where there are few opportunities for women to advance coupled with inadequate laws to prosecute traffickers.3 Historically, many of the victims of sex trafficking include women who are forced to work as prostitutes in areas surrounding military bases.4 Areas near U.S. military bases are no exception, as brothels and massage parlors spring up to meet demand. In fact, the United States has consistently allowed and, in some cases, even implicitly encouraged the development of brothels near military bases to satisfy the sexual desires of Americans serving there.5 Recently, as the list of offenses alleged to have been committed at Abu Ghraib seemingly increases by the day, new reports indicate a possible prostitution ring involving members of military police units having sex with Iraqi prostitutes.6 These incidents undermine and contradict efforts of the United States to lead the world in the fight against human trafficking.



Prostitution in South Korea is a direct result of military presence in the region. In the status quo prostitution has not decreased even with changing military policies
Dujisin 9-(Zoltain, Inter Press Service, “Prostitution Thrives with U.S. Military Presence,” 7/7/09)

Since 1945, U.S. troops have been stationed in the Korean peninsula, with their current strength estimated to be 28,500. The country plunged into civil war between 1950 and 1953 and since then, U.S. troops have remained there, claiming to act as a deterrent against North Korea, the country’s communist neighbour. Prostitution in the region is a direct result of their presence, local observers say. Russian and Chinese troops also had troops stationed on the Korean peninsula in the aftermath of the civil conflict, but "have since left the area while U.S. troops are still here, in almost 100 military bases," Yu Young Nim, the head of a local non-governmental organisation which provides counseling, medical and legal care for sex workers, told IPS. Yu Young Nim’s office is located at the Camp Stanley Camptown, a few metres away from local Korean restaurants, home in the 1980s to U.S.-imported Kentucky Fried Chicken and Subway logos. Locals attest to the slow decay of a town. In front of one of these restaurants, sits a 36-year old former "mama-san", which in Korea denotes women supervising sex-work establishments. Like many other retired sex-workers, she looks older than her age, and has decided to open a restaurant. The "mama-san" prefers catering to U.S. soldiers instead of the more demanding Korean clientele. "G.I.s eat their food without complaints," she told IPS. "Koreans always expect to be served like kings." It was in camps such as these that a new dish called Pudaettsigae entered the Korean diet: Poor Koreans took ingredients such as sausage, beans, processed cheese from leftovers at the U.S. camp and mixed them with home-grown ingredients. After being a sex worker for much of her youth, during which she had a son with a U.S. soldier, like other "mama-sans" she opened her own club, where she employed other girls. She had to shut shop three years ago due to declining incomes. "If the base closes, I’ll try moving to the [United] States; it would be good for my son," she says. Her son lives in Korea and speaks the language well enough, but got his primary education in English. "I don’t think he could attend a Korean university, but the U.S. universities are too expensive for us." She could only wish his father was there to help. "I have some contact with the grandfather, but barely with the father. He doesn’t send my son gifts, not even a Christmas card. He has so much more money than me and doesn’t do anything for his son," she says. "My son [believes] he has no father." Several U.S. soldiers have married local prostitutes, in many cases impregnating them, only to later abandon them. "Even in those cases of couples living together, these women can be easily abandoned by their husbands or boyfriends, and are victims of physical, mental and financial abuse," says Young Nim. "The women mostly come from broken families, backgrounds of sexual abuse or domestic violence, and there is no protection from victims of these crimes," he says. "After entering the prostitution business they can’t get out." U.S. officials have made statements condemning prostitution but have done little to stop it. "They think this system should exist for the U.S. soldiers. Superficially they stand for a zero tolerance policy but practically they know what is going on and use this system," Young Nim told IPS. There has been a reduction in prostitution of Korean women, which "has more to do with the work of non-governmental organisations and the fact that Korea has developed economically," while "there is no contact with the U.S. authorities. They have a legal office and counseling centre but only for their own soldiers and relatives." After the negative publicity, the top military officials of the U.S. army have slowly became more outspoken in their condemnation of prostitution. U.S. soldiers were discouraged from frequenting traditional entertainment districts in central Seoul, although locals say that did little to stop them.


Eliminating troops is key. As long as they are there, prostitution will continue—empirically proven
Brian parsons, J.D. Candidate, Northwestern University School of Law; B.A. in Communication , 5/06, “Significant steps or empty rhetoric? Current efforts by the United States to Combat Sexual Trafficking near Military bases”, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v4/n3/5/?title=Significant+Steps+or+Empty+Rhetoric%3F+Current+Efforts+by+the+United+States%0D%0Ato+Combat+Sexual+Trafficking+near+Military+Bases&author=Brian+Parsons&pagination=&startpage=&endpage=&issueTitle=&issueDate=May+2006&vol=4&n=3&jTitle=Northwestern+University+Journal+of+International+Human+Rights&cite
In essence, sex trafficking near military bases boils down to a supply and demand issue. While initiatives such as the United Nations Protocol on Trafficking in Persons and the Trafficking Victims Prevention Act9 may be useful in persuading countries to combat trafficking within their own borders, the host country alone has the power to influence the supply of trafficked women available near military bases. But no matter how hard a country attempts to limit the influx of trafficked women into their country, as long as U.S. military bases are creating a strong demand for prostitution and trafficked women, organized crime will find a way to meet that demand. This is not a unique problem of the United States and its military. As long as there have been armies and wars, there have been prostitutes near military bases to service the sexual demands of soldiers.10 But, while the United States pledges to combat trafficking worldwide, these actions threaten the credibility of the United States and help to fund organized crime.11



Removing troops prioritizes women’s plight and sets a precedent for US policy towards all women forced into prostitution
Katherine H.S. Moon, Professor Department of Political Science, February 07, “Resurrecting Prostitutes and Overturning Treaties: Gender Politics in the “Anti-American” Movement in South Korea” http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/KMoon/JAS66-1.pdf
The case of militarized prostitution demonstrates the openings for and limitations on civil society development in Korea with respect to women’s participation, the integration of women’s issues into the agendas of CSOs, and gender-sensitive policy outcomes. I argue that in the context of democratic consolidation, particular features of the anti-troop and women’s movements have narrowed the political space for gender-specific activism and women’s leadership in addressing the rights and needs of the very women whose lives are most inti- mately affected by the presence and conduct of U.S. troops. Specifically, gender politics and the organizational structures of the CSOs in the anti-American move- ment have abetted the marginalization of militarized prostitution as a political cause. This is a result of the diversification and mainstreaming of women’s issues and activism and the actions of CSO leaders who push a “masculinist- nationalist” agenda—aimed primarily at rapid reunification, complete withdrawal of U.S. troops, and a fuller assertion of Korean sovereignty—while subordinating camptown women’s grievances to conceptions of nationalism. I will show that the kijich’on movement has been orphaned by mainstream women’s organizations in some ways but has been adopted by nationalist groups that have instrumentalized the plight and suffering of prostituted women for their own political ends.
Policy debates among CSOs about kijich’on prostitution have tended to focus on the bilateral relationship between Korea and the United States rather than the specific social costs of the U.S. military presence or both governments’ failure to observe the rights and welfare needs of prostitutes and other local camptown residents. This is particularly problematic given the current demographic diver- sity of the kijich’on residents, especially women in militarized prostitution. Since the mid-1990s, women from the Philippines and the former Soviet countries have been brought into these areas to serve as cheap labor in the sex and enter- tainment industries around the camptowns. At the same time, the number of Korean women in the sex industry has declined considerably. In Kyo ̆nggi Province, where 65 percent of the 34 major U.S. military installations are based, the number of Korean women working in bars and nightclubs declined drastically, from 1,269 in 1999 to 386 in 2001 (Saewoomtuh 2001a, 77). The majority of women coming into contact with U.S. soldiers are foreign nationals, often illegal (undocumented) and therefore lacking legal agency and political legitimacy in Korean civil society. Despite the increasingly multinational, multi- cultural, and multilayered legal (and illegal) arrangements in place in the kijich’on areas, Korean activists continue to criticize the United States for degrading and violating Korean women’s dignity and human rights. Policy proposals reflect this nationalist and bilateralist perspective.



Military prostitution in Korea serves to uphold the interests of patriarchal politics
Kirk and Okazawa-rey 1998-(writers for The Women and War Reader, “Making Connections Building an East Asia-U.S. Women’s Network against U.S. Militarism” New York University Press. http://www.gwynkirk.net/pdf/making_connections_paper.pdf
The governments of the three host countries have all made explicit arrangements with the U.S. military concerning R and R (or I and I—intoxication and intercourses—as it is sometimes called), including arrangements for regular health checkups for women who service the men, assuming that they are the cause of sexually transmitted diseases. At the height of U.S. activity in the Philippines, as many as 60,000 women and children were estimated to have worked in bars, nightclubs, and massage parlors servicing U.S. troops. Participants noted many similarities concerning militarized prostitution in Asia, especially during the Vietnam War. U.S. military personnel returning from battle were angry, fearful, and frustrated, and took it out on Okinawan and Filipino women. In Okinawa there are many stories of women being beaten, choked, and killed. Many survived, are now in their fifties and sixties, but their scars remain. Currently it is Filipinas who work in the clubs around U.S. bases in Okinawa, because the strength of the Japanese economy has given Okinawan women other opportunities and reduced the buying power of G.I.’s dollars. Military prostitution serves the interests of patriarchal politics. It divides so-called “good” from “bad” women; moreover separate bars for white G.I.s and African Americans also divide bar women into two categories. This work is highly stigmatized, and marrying a foreigner is thought by many bar women to the only way out. Militarized prostitution has had very serious effects on women’s health, including HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions, drug and alcohol dependency, malnutrition, respiratory diseases, and psychological problems related to the trauma and violence of this work. In the Philippines, WEDPRO, BUKLOD, GABRIELA, and the Coalition against Trafficking in Women (Asia-Pacific) are tackling this very difficult issue in several ways through public education and advocacy, and political activism: providing support to women and Amerasian children through counseling, day care, legal and medical services, and referrals to other agencies; and training women in business skills, especially to set up microenterprises, get access to loans, and help establish women’s co-ops. The Philippines constitution enshrines the ideals of a peaceful, just, and humane society; a self-reliant national economy; social justice in all phases of national development; respect for the 6 rights of people and organizations at all levels of decision-making; and the protection of people’s rights to a balanced and healthful ecology. It is now nearly seven years since the U.S. military withdrew from the Philippines, but there have been no government programs to address the needs of women and children. Women who worked in the bars were faced with how to survive. Some went to South Korea or Guam to service G.I.s, others moved to Filipino bars and clubs, and still others tried to make a go of small businesses. Many are still working in the bars around Olongapo City and Angeles servicing G.I.s on shore leave as well as tourists, mainly from Australia and Europe. In March 1996 some 2,500 to 3,000 G.I.s took shore leave in the Philippines, creating such a high demand that the mayors of Angeles and Olongapo quickly got together to work on the problem of getting more women. In Korea, military prostitution has deep roots in Japanese imperialism, and continues under the U.S. military. Prostituted women in G. I. towns (kijichon) outside the bases work in deplorable conditions and earn roughly $170 per month. They are allowed one rest day per month; if they take an additional rest day they are fined half a month’s wages. Among the older women who draw in customers to bars and clubs are “comfort women” who survived the Japanese military. Two Korean NGOs, Du Rae Bang and Sae Woom Tuh, work with bar women and women who date U.S. military personnel. They focus on counseling, education, and providing shelter and alternative employment. A bakery at Du Rae Bang has been running for nine years and has led the way for some bar women to learn new skills and become self-reliant. Similarly, Sae Woom Tuh women have started a herb-growing project. Both these organizations seek to empower bar women to make demands of the Korean and U.S. governments concerning their situation, and to educate the wider society on this issue. Korean participants also reported that in the past few years G.I. towns have undergone changes, becoming international prostitution zones for foreign men, with foreign women workers coming to Korea from the Philippines, China, Taiwan, and Russia, some of them illegally. They noted links between militarized prostitution and sex tourism; many problems are similar to those in the Philippines and there is much to learn from that experience. Korean participants emphasized the exploitation and violence of kijichon women and also included powerful stories of their strength. There are examples 7 of women clubbing together to buy each other out of the bar, for example. In the case of Yoon Kum E, another bar woman who knew the murderer waited outside the base for him and forced military police to arrest him. He still had blood on his white pants.
Focusing on patriarchy is critical to challenge all forms of domination and violence
Karen Warren, Professors at Macalester and Hamline & Duane Cady 1996, Hypatia, Spring, questia
Of special interest to feminist philosophers are "conceptual frameworks." A conceptual framework is a set of basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions that shape and reflect how we view ourselves and others. It is a socially constructed lens through which one views the world. When it explains, justifies, and maintains relationships of domination and subordination, a conceptual framewowrk is oppressive. An oppressive conceptual framework is patriarchal when it explains, justifies, and maintains the subordination of women by men (Warren 1987, 1989, 1990, 1994). Perhaps the most obvious connection between feminism and peace is that both are structured around the concept and logic of domination (see (5) below). Although there are a great many varieties of feminism, all feminists agree that the domination/subordination of women exists, is morally wrong, and must be eliminated. Most feminists agree that the social construction of gender is affected by such multiple factors as race/ethnicity, class, affectional preferences, age, religion, and geographic location. So, in fact, any feminist movement to end the oppression of women will also be a movement, for example, to end the multiple oppressions of racism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism, imperialism, and so on (see Warren 1990). War, the "decision by arms," the "final arbiter of disputes," "an act of force which theoretically has no limits'" (Clausewitz 1976) amounts to domination pushed to the extreme: Imposition of will by one group onto another by means of threat, injury, and death. Genuine peace ("positive peace"), on the other hand, involves interaction between and among individuals and groups where such behavior is orderly from within, cooperative, and based on agreement. Genuine peace is not a mere absence of war ("negative peace"), where order is imposed from outside by domination (Cady 1989, 1991). It is the process and reality where life-affirming, self-determined, environmentally sustainable ends are sought and accomplished through coalitionary, interactive, cooperative means. Feminism and peace share an important conceptual connection: Both are critical of, and committed to the elimination of, coercive power-over privilege systems of domination as a basis of interaction between individuals and groups. A feminist critique and development of any peace politics, therefore, ultimately is a critique of systems of unjustified domination. What constitutes such systems of unjustified domination? Warren has explicitly argued elsewhere (Warren 1987, 1988, 1990, 1994, N.d.) that at the conceptual level they consist of at least five oppressive ways of interpreting the world and acting in it. These are five characteristics of an oppressive conceptual framework and the behaviors linked with their implementation: (1) value-hierarchical thinking, that is, Up-Down thinking which attributes higher value (status, prestige) to what is "Up" than to what is "Down"; (2) value dualisms, that is, disjunctive pairs in which the disjuncts are seen as oppositional (rather than as complementary) and as exclusive (rather than as inclusive); value dualisms include reason/emotion, mind/body, culture/nature, human/nature, and man/woman dichotomies; (3) conceptions of power as power-over (in contrast to power-with, power-within, power toward, and power-against power);(3) (4) conceptions of privilege which favor the interests of the "Ups"; and (5) a logic of domination, that is, a structure of argumentation which presumes that superiority justifies subordination. In a patriarchal conceptual framework, higher status is attributed to what is male-gender-identified than to what is female-gender-identified, Many feminists claim that, at least in Western culture, emotion, body, and nature have been historically female-gender-identified and considered inferior to reason, mind, and culture, which have been male-gender-identified. Conceptually, a feminist perspective suggests that patriarchal conceptual frameworks and the behavior they give rise to, are what sanction, maintain, and perpetuate "isms of domination"--sexism, racism, classism, warism,(4) naturism(5) and the coercive power-over institutions and practices necessary to maintain these "isms." If this is correct, then no account of peace is adequate which does not reveal patriarchal conceptual frameworks; they underlie and sustain war and conflict resolution strategies. (Examples of why we think this is correct are laced throughout the remainder of the paper.)


The US is key to stopping sex trafficking around the world
Brian parsons, J.D. Candidate at Northwestern University School of Law; B.A. in Communication , 5/06, “Significant steps or empty rhetoric? Current efforts by the United States to Combat Sexual Trafficking near Military bases”, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v4/n3/5/?title=Significant+Steps+or+Empty+Rhetoric%3F+Current+Efforts+by+the+United+States%0D%0Ato+Combat+Sexual+Trafficking+near+Military+Bases&author=Brian+Parsons&pagination=&startpage=&endpage=&issueTitle=&issueDate=May+2006&vol=4&n=3&jTitle=Northwestern+University+Journal+of+International+Human+Rights&cite
Trafficking in persons continues to be a pervasive problem worldwide. The majority of trafficking involves women and children used for sexual exploitation. From the many memoranda and directives stating the United States' strong stance against trafficking, it appears that, if nothing else, there is a growing awareness of the nature of the problem. However, until the United States takes the necessary steps to stop the proliferation of sexual trafficking that occurs near its own military bases, such strong words will ring hollow to the world. In the past, pressure has been applied on the military to stop the practice of patronizing prostitutes to avoid contracting diseases or for moral reasons. However, these efforts were aimed at protecting U.S. soldiers rather than the victims of sexual trafficking. Today, it is more important than ever to take practical steps to discourage the practice as most of the money that is made from the sex industry ends up in the hands of criminals and sometimes even possible terrorists.185 In fact, the sex trafficking industry is slowly overtaking drug trafficking as the industry of choice for international organized crime groups.186 The fact that these profits end up funding organized crime and terrorists undermines the purpose of the occupation.


Contention two is militarism
Military exploitation of Korean prostitutes epitomizes the US’s exploitation of Korea—only removal of US presence solves domination
Moon 97, Katharine H.S., Department of Political Science and Chair of Asian Studies @ Wellesley College, “Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S./Korea Relations”, 1997, Columbia University Press
I think there is yet another, unspoken, reason why these women have been forced out of Korean consciousness for nearly half a decade: Koreans have not wanted reminders of the war lurking around them and the insecurity that their newfound wealth and international power have been built on. That is, kijich'on women are living symbols of the destruction, poverty, bloodshed, and separation from family of Korea's civil war. They are living testaments of Korea's geographical and political division into North and South and of the South's military insecurity and consequent dependence on the United States. The sexual domination of tens of thousands of Korean women by "Yangk'i foreigners" is a social disgrace and a "necessary evil" that South Koreans believe they have had to endure to keep U.S. soldiers on Korean soil, a compromise in national pride, all for the goal of national security. Such humiliation is a price paid by the "little brother" in the alliance for protection by the "big brother." It is not a coincidence that a newfound public interest in the plight of kijich'on prostitutes in the mid-late 1980s and early 1990s occurred at a time of increased and sometimes intense anti-Americanism among Koreans. Social activists and antigovernment protesters have pointed to kijich'on prostitution as representative of U.S. domination over Korean politics and the continued presence of U.S. military bases as perpetuation of South Korea's neocolonial status vis-ˆ-vis the United States. For anti-U.S. base activists, Korean independence from U.S. domination means the withdrawal of U.S. bases from Korea and the liberation of the kijich'on woman from the sexual domination of the GI.
Women embody the idea of nationhood—the process of peaceful nationbuilding must incorporate female interests
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 54-55)
In order to understand the role of prostitutes in nationalist movements, it is important to recognise the general role of women in nation-building. Yuval- Davis points out that the primary role of women in nationalist projects involves the construction of mothers as the embodiment of the homeland. A figure of a woman symbolizes the spirit of nationalism in many cultures because mothers are seen as the biological reproducers of members of ethnic collectivities (Nagel, 1998: 256). This symbolic embodiment also means that women bear what Yuval-Davis terms the ‘burden of representation’ (2001: 121). Nation is a bounded concept, and women become responsible for symbolically defining the boundaries of collective identities. Joane Nagel also points out that women’s sexuality is a matter of prime national interest because motherhood symbolism is tied to masculine honour (1998: 256). Yuval-Davis is careful to acknowledge that only women who behave ‘properly’ and wear the ‘proper’ clothing embody the line which signifies the collective boundaries (2001: 127). Enactment of proper feminine behaviour is a crucial aspect of women’s role as reproducer of normative boundaries of ethnic or national groups. Since many nationalists liken the nation to the family, women occupy an important symbolic place as mothers of the nation (Nagel, 1998: 254). Male honour is tied to this conception of women’s sexual respectability, giving national males the responsibility of protecting their women from foreign men.


All efforts to minimize abuses in camp towns have failed due to corruption. Further U.S. military presence leads to the continued slavery and suffering of prostitutes.
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 58-60)
Robert Kinney, the US Secretary of the Status of Forces Agreement Joint Committee, pushed for the creation of the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Civil–Military Relations between the US and South Korea on 2 September 1971.The Subcommittee intended to investigate the problems involving US military personnel around the camps, as well as to eliminate and correct the conditions that posed a threat to Korean–American relations (SOFA JC Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Civil–Military Relations, signed 2 September 1971). Besides addressing racial issues, the Subcommittee focused on the substantial spread of venereal diseases among US troops and prostitutes. Since venereal diseases posed a serious problem to troop morale, programmes were started to register prostitutes, to perform regular health check-ups, and to quarantine women who were infected. Because prostitution is illegal under Korean law, the government had previously been unwilling to address health issues officially. However, the government became eager to comply with the programmes of the Subcommittee. The Korean government spent a considerable amount of money on the ‘clean-up’ campaign proposed by the Subcommittee (ibid., p. 79). It appears that this joint US–Korea effort to increase morale among US troops and project a more positive public image of camptown life effectively used women to make US military bases run more smoothly. Although the Korean government appeared to engage in regulation of prostitution in order to appease the US military, it is important to note that prostitution remained illegal. The pervasiveness of prostitution near military bases in the country has not been addressed by the Korean government, but the situation has received some attention from the international community. Besides a large number of Korean prostitutes, there was also an increasing number of foreign women becoming involved in camptown prostitution. A United Nations agency report from September 2002 revealed that more than 5,000 women, mostly from Russia and the Philippines, were caught up in a prostitution network in South Korea that served US soldiers (Capdevila, 2002). According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), conservative estimates indicated that human traffickers were bringing hundreds of women into South Korea (IOM, 2002). Despite the fact that it is the government’s responsibility to investigate the major crime rings that are engaging in human trafficking, the South Korean government seems to have been making it easier for women to enter the country for prostitution purposes. Reports reveal that a South Korean organization is the chief contractor for holders of the E-6 visa, which allows women entry into the country to work for the ‘entertainment’ industry. The Korea Special Tourism Association is ‘approved and regulated by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’, according to government documents (ibid.). This association consists of 189 owners of clubs located in close proximity to military bases throughout South Korea. The spokesperson for the IOM states that, given these facts, there is ‘clearly some linkage’ between the trafficking of women and the presence of US troops (ibid.). For instance, the Philippines government filed a compensation suit against a South Korean brothel owner for forcing 11 Filipino women to work as prostitutes for US soldiers in the country. The 11 young women came into the country legally with E-6 visas, but were forced to sell drinks and sex to US soldiers without being paid. One of the women was infected with a venereal disease, and another suffered a miscarriage (Lee, 2002a). Hidden charges, employer fines and forced savings often deprived these women of salaried income, virtually turning them into indentured servants. Because the economy in Korea is quite strong, many of the US troops can no longer afford to buy South Korean prostitutes on their G.I. salary; the Filipino women are willing to work for less money. These women are especially attractive to American soldiers because they speak English (Koppel, 2002). As a result, the Korean government has allowed the immigration of many Filipino women by granting them E-6 visas. It appears that the South Korean government has remained in the business of catering to the sexual needs of US soldiers. The US military has recognized that some actions must be taken to address the increasing resentment of Korean citizens regarding US soldiers’ actions outside the bases, especially after the Koreans began to pressure their government for stricter legislation to manage the increased trafficking of women and forced prostitution. Similar to the Japanese case, the US tried to smooth diplomatic relations with a public apology from George W. Bush and a day of ‘sensitivity’ training for US troops.On 10 October 2002, the US military halted regular duties for approximately 32,000 troops. For the first time in half a century, US troops were ordered off duty in order to ‘promote better ties with the host ally’ (Lee, 2002b). The soldiers spent a day watching videos and attending lectures about alcohol and drug abuse, road safety and allegations of prostitution at bars frequented by military troops. The army designed ‘New Horizons Day’ to ‘bolster the US–South Korean alliance’ (ibid.). One could question, however, how effective a day of this sort of sensitivity training would turn out to be. Although it looks like some attempts have been made to publicly reconcile differences with the Korean protestors, it does not appear that either government is particularly committed to making any real changes in the prostitution system. The changes in this prostitution system are necessary in order to appease the disgruntled Korean protestors. Lieutenant General Daniel Zanini, commander of the 8th US Army, the main US force in Korea since the Korean War, issued a statement to all US units that the command ‘does not condone or support the illegal activities of human trafficking and prostitution’ (Kirk, 2002). Despite this official stance, undercover news reports suggest that the US military still actively contributes to the prostitution system in South Korea. For instance, a US television station secretly filmed US military police patrolling bars and brothels, where the officers said women were forced to prostitute themselves. The report suggested that these military officials seem to be working on behalf of the establishments that service American troops, instead of trying to protect the women (Koppel, 2002). Obviously, the US military wants to make sure that troops have plenty of opportunities for sexual recreation. South Korea’s president has also acknowledged the growing anti- American sentiment that has been the result of the conduct of US soldiers, but he is careful not to take any actions that would jeopardize relations. At a cabinet meeting in Seoul in 2002, President Roh Moo-Hyun stated that ‘indiscriminate anti-Americanism will not be beneficial to our national interests, although we can criticize US policies in a sound manner’ (Deutsche Presse, 2002). Similar to the power dynamic in the 1970s camptown cleanups, South Korea fails to possess any substantive leverage in the controversy over US bases. Even though the South Korean government has attempted to establish a degree of interdependence with the USFK, they have been unable to exploit that interdependence due to larger power imbalances. As the President’s statement indicates, South Korea is not in the position to do anything to jeopardize bilateral relations, restricting their latitude in any decisions concerning the camptown controversies.


The government uses prostitution to protect only a chosen part of society and sacrifice the rest as a means of preserving masculine pride
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 63)
Prostitution practices around US military bases in South Korea also reinforce Nagel’s connection between female sexuality and male honour. Similar to Japan, prostitution was seen as a small sacrifice to protect the majority of Korean women from the US military. Many Koreans believed that camptown prostitutes served to protect ‘normal’ Korean women in the larger society from being raped and sexually assaulted by the US troops. There was widespread knowledge of the rape of housewives and young virgins that occurred before the implementation of a prostitution system to accommodate the sexual needs of US soldiers (Moon, 1997: 155). Just as in Japan, women had to live in fear of the foreign troops.


Now is the time to leave—the idea of womanhood is inextricably linked to the idea of nationhood, destroying the health of South Korea
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 62-63)
Although female fecundity is valued in mothers of the nation, Nagel points out that uncontrolled female sexuality can be viewed as a threat to the nationalist project (1998). Although the ‘right’ women must be sexually available to the ‘right’ men (Nagel invokes the image of a maiden with a shield awaiting her masculine leader), female decadents (in this context prostitutes and lesbians) are typically viewed as unpatriotic. Both unwilling and willing sexual encounters with foreigners can create a crisis of male honour and a weakening of the nation (Nagel, 1998: 256).Yet, the cases of Japan and South Korea provide evidence that female decadents’ sexuality can also be harnessed to the nationalist cause.
The Korean government uses prostitutes as a tool for nationalism, but disregards them as human beings worthy of care.
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 63-64)
Military camptown prostitutes in Korea were also viewed by the government as contributors to the nationalist cause. In an interview from 1992, the former political secretary in charge of setting up prostitution for the post- 1945 US occupation forces recalls that during Etiquette and Good Conduct Lectures sponsored monthly by camptown officials, the prostitutes’ role in the nationalist project was heavily emphasized. For instance, the local mayor told the prostitutes: ‘All of you, who cater to the US soldiers, are patriots. All of you are nationalists working to increase the foreign exchange earnings of our country’ (Moon, 1997: 103). In fact, the Korean government went so far as to label the prostitutes ‘personal ambassadors’ to the US troops, selling their sex as a patriotic service.The Japanese system of organized prostitution was used as a model for South Korean government officials. One government official reportedly asked a group of prostitutes: ‘Why did Japan develop from nothing to greatness?’ (ibid., p. 153). He answered his own question by emphasizing that the Korean prostitutes should imitate the spirit of Japanese prostitutes who serviced the Allied forces during the occupation: The Japanese prostitute, when she finished with the GI, did not get up to go to the next GI but knelt before him and pleaded with him to help rebuild Japan. The spirit of the Japanese prostitution was concerned with the survival of her fatherland. (Ibid.) Cynthia Enloe points out that local businessmen and officials in the Philippines justified the organization of brothels for US soldiers for the same reason as their South Korean and Japanese counterparts: brothels would aid the protection of ‘decent and respectable’ women (Enloe, 2000: 73).The prostitutes had to bear the honour of all Filipino women. As Jennifer Butler has pointed out, categorizing some women as ‘bad’ allows others to be ‘good’ so long as they do not step outside the strictly prescribed social roles (2000: 210).The ‘bad’ label creates a class of women who are viewed as sexually available commodities outside the protection of the law, so the general health and welfare of Filipino prostitutes are completely disregarded by the government. The designation of a category of bad women is critical because it creates an incentive to adhere to the image of good women that is central to national identity formation. The three cases discussed illustrate this distinction into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women and how it served a crucial role in the national policies.


The concept of war and the military is plagued by sexuality—prostitutes are viewed as weak women devoid of agency, and Korean prostitutes are used to protect “clean” populations from contamination
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 64-65)
Many feminist scholars who attempt to address the relationship between women and war often cite Virginia Woolf’s classic anti-war piece, Three Guineas, in their analysis. Scholars such as Cynthia Enloe (2000) and Sarah Ruddick (1990) use Woolf’s essay to show how women have become outsiders by fate (note that Woolf was referring primarily to upper class women). Woolf encouraged women to embrace their outsider status, by claiming that women are ‘strangers to men’s wars’ (1966).The ‘outsider status’ of women not only emphasizes the fact that war is men’s business, it emphasizes the idea that men’s business is abhorrent. Sarah Ruddick points out that, ‘it is not that men are warlike but that war elicits and satisfies predatory, assaultive impulses’ (1990: 219). These authors appropriately acknowledge that military conflict is sexualized through the use of masculine imagery of rape, penetration and sexual conquest to depict military domination and weapons (Nagel, 1998: 258). Thus, military actions cannot be viewed in gender-neutral terms. There is a close link between the desire to dominate and humiliate the enemy and physical domination over women. As soon as US soldiers invaded Japan’s national territory, they began to view local women as ‘the women belonging to the enemy’ and, as a result, the number of sexual crimes committed by US troops in Okinawa was highest in the years immediately following the occupation (Tanaka, 2002: 110). Indeed, certain military vocabulary closely resembles sexual language. For instance, the military-supplied condom brand for the occupying troops was called the ‘Assault No. 1’, indicating the army’s success at penetrating ‘enemy territory’ (ibid., p. 176). Clearly, it implies that forcefully conquering the women of the enemy was a way to boost troop morale. It is apparent that there is an important link between political and sexual domination. Japanese leaders were not just trying to avoid the loss of virginity of Japanese women by providing the Allied forces with ‘professional women’. They were also attempting to avoid the humiliation of being feminized themselves by the dominating occupying forces. Sexual exploitation has a very important effect on the consciousness of a nation; the occupied nation becomes ‘de-masculinized, feminized, and subjugated’ (ibid., p. 180). As a result, Japanese government officials attempted to avoid humiliation by sacrificing a small number of prostitutes who were ‘marginal to the nation-state’, but this plan failed miserably, because eventually all of Japan came to be seen by the Allied forces as ‘one big brothel’ (ibid.). In order to rectify this humiliating situation, popular nationalist slogans resisting US military occupation used expressions that symbolized the purity of the nation. Prostitutes are viewed with contempt by other Koreans because they symbolize the destruction, poverty and separation from family caused by Korea’s division (Lee, 2002). Not only do they represent the sharp divide between the North and South, the prostitutes also symbolize the resulting dependence on the US for security.The sexual domination of thousands of Korean women by American soldiers is viewed as a ‘necessary evil’ that South Koreans have to endure to keep the US soldiers on their soil. In other words, the prostitutes were ‘compromising to their national pride’ (Moon, 1997: 8).These prostitutes were the sacrifice needed to save the nation. In the Philippines, military training teaches men to hate ‘weakness’ in themselves, defined as ‘feminine’ by the military (Hilsdon, 1995: 92).‘Strength’ is associated with the conquest of a weaker enemy, so the enemy/victim is feminized and the conqueror is masculinized. This strong–weak dichotomy is extended to include male control over women; with military force directed against weaker cultures or nations (ibid.).This hatred of the feminine supports the sexual exploitation of all women in war through prostitution, rape and torture. Consequently, sexual exploitation represents the fusion of sexual and military conquest.


Linking nationalist politics of U.S. troop withdrawal and demilitarization with the feminist movement solves for the prostitution industry, Philippines prove.
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 66-68)
It is not a coincidence that new-found public interest in the plight of prostitutes in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with rising anti- American sentiments in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. The Philippines provides an important contrast to the cases of Japan and South Korea, because nationalist Filipinos played a major role — sometimes with an overtly feminist interpretation of nationalism — in bringing about the US base closings in their country, which caused the subsequent demise of the military prostitution industry. Unlike their counterparts in Japan and South Korea, Filipino prostitutes were able to organize and work in tandem within the nationalist movement to protest the ‘racist imperialism practiced by the first world’ (Hilsdon, 1995: 99). The Filipino case illustrates the success and power prostitutes can yield. The feminist movement in the Philippines was organized largely under the General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership and Action (GABRIELA), an umbrella organization of various women’s groups around the country.Through their 1985 ‘Filipino Women’s Manifesto’, women’s groups were able to publicly link the problems of foreign intervention and economic inequality, and the intersection between national crisis and the women’s crisis (Friesen, 1989: 679). GABRIELA was effective in demonstrating how issues that are the centre of the nationalist movement often overlap with the concerns of Filipino women. For example, control over their own economy affects both feministgroups and nationalist groups because it results in control over wages and prices (ibid., p. 681). Instead of discussing prostitution in a vacuum, Filipinos insisted on tying their organizational strategies to issues of Philippine nationalism and demilitarization (Enloe, 1990: 39). Despite numerous anti-base protests from feminist and nationalist groups, the Aquino administration ignored their demands and caved in to pressure from the Bush administration. However, when the newly negotiated treaty on US bases was brought before the Philippine senate in September 2001, the senate voted to reject the treaty. Statements from senators indicated that the nationalists groups had effectively politicized the base issue. For example, Senator Agapito Aquino (the president’s brother-in-law) claimed that the US needed to understand that: [T]he presence of the bases translates into a very real incapacity to stand on our own feet, a palpable inability to grow up, a political adolescence perpetually tied to the purse strings of America, a crippling dependence, an anachronistic colonial and Cold War mentality. (McGurn, 1992: 42) At the same time, it was evident that prostitution and other sexual victimizing of women were relevant factors in the senate’s decision. Senator Juan Ponce Enrile declared that the economic vitality and political independence could only be achieved when the ‘the last bar girl in Olongapo turns out the last light in the last cabaret’ (ibid.). Moreover, feminist groups in the Philippines have successfully politicized the trafficking of women to South Korea. The South Korean government’s complicity in human trafficking has been a source of protest for many Filipino feminist groups. Responding to this increasing pressure, President Arroyo made a state visit to South Korea in June 2003 and secured a promise from President Roh to maintain ‘close cooperation for the protection and welfare’ of each other’s nationals (Agence France Presse, 2003). Shortly afterwards, the Ministry of Justice of South Korea informed the Philippine embassy in Seoul that the E-6 visas would no longer be issued. In a letter to the embassy, the Ministry of Justice said the decision was made because ‘foreign dancers have suffered from scores of human rights violations such as involuntary confinement, withholding of wages, assaults, and forced prostitution’ (Xinhua News Agency, 2003). It is evident that the Philippine feminist movement has played a major role in influencing another country’s government. Successful Filipino activists attempted to establish cooperation with their Japanese counterparts after the 1995 Okinawa rape. They collaborated at the Fourth UN Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995, but it was difficult to make the Filipino–Japanese alliance a focal point in the response to the 1995 rape.The Japanese nationalist movement has become so focused on Okinawa’s autonomy concerns that women’s issues have become a sidebar. For example, one Japanese feminist recalled trying to introduce a feminist perspective on the schoolgirl’s rape at a meeting of Okinawan anti-base activists. A man pointed his finger at the women when she entered the meeting and shouted:‘You! You always only raise the violence against women issue. That’s not political. That’s not what the US–Japanese Security Treaty is about!’ (Enloe, 2000: 120). Unfortunately, the successful movement in the Philippines cannot easily be transported to another place. Similarly, social activists and anti-government protestors have conceptualized prostitution as an issue of US domination over Korean politics, not a ‘women’s issue’.The presence of US military bases is viewed as a continuation of South Korea’s neo-colonial status, and Korean independence from US military domination would result in the withdrawal of US bases and liberation of the prostitutes from sexual domination by the soldiers (Moon, 1997: 9). Again, anti-US base activists do not see the liberation of the prostitutes as an issue of misogyny or violence against women. Instead, they view sexual domination as a problem because it undermines their nationalist project. The success of Filipino feminists demonstrates that without civil society change, the women’s situation will not change. Filipino women acting in civil society insisted that if their exploitation was going to become a symbol of national humiliation, they deserved the right to have involvement in the postbase development plans.We can say that one of the reasons why Japanese and South Korean nationalists have been unsuccessful at pressuring their respective governments over the base issue is because they have been unable to give public voice and organization to the importance of women’s situationin their nationalist struggles.



As globalization causes countries to interconnect, the role of prostitutes as political actors becomes crucial. Only by focusing on the female role in constructing national identity can we promote international respect and change the concept of national security tied to war and hegemony.
Andris Zimelis, Professor of Analysis of political, social, and market issues, 2009 (Human Rights, the Sex Industry and Foreign Troops: Feminist Analysis of Nationalism in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, http://cac.sagepub.com/content/44/1/51.full.pdf+html, pg 68-70)
Several conclusions ensue from this analysis. First of all, we need to view female sex workers as actors in world politics. Although the prostitutes discussed are typically economically, socially and physically marginalized, as a group these women have been treated as important actors in their respective countries’ nationalist projects. Certain groups of the Asian woman in the three Asian countries did not always choose to participate in the sex trade, but the government’s larger ‘national security’ concerns were contingent upon the services they provided to US troops. Keohane and Nye’s conception of a transnational actor necessitates ‘significant resources’ or ‘substantial control’ over policy areas, but it is evident that we need to expand these concepts to include not only money, guns and diplomacy, but also sex (Keohane and Nye, 1972: 380).We have seen that sex has played a major role in national projects of Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Furthermore, the distinction between national and international systems seems to be breaking down as we become more globalized (Rosenau, 1966: 137). As a result, political analysis requires us to ‘treat the functioning of national systems as increasingly dependent on external events and trends’ (ibid., p. 147). This concept is pertinent to discussions of nationalist movements in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines because in these three countries large United States military bases created a high degree of interdependence between governments. Consequently, the boundaries between national political systems are no longer starkly defined. Foreign and domestic policies are intertwined in a complex web of interdependence. When analysing nationalism in these three cases, the separation of low and high politics is no longer useful. Although there is a tendency to dichotomize ‘high’ sovereignty and security matters and ‘low’ economics and social activities politics when looking at security issues, the degree to which these states have been penetrated by US interests renders this dichotomy useless. By using prostitution to understand nationalism in Japan, the Philippines and South Korea, it becomes evident that, despite Realist claims to the contrary, ‘low’ politics can often have substantial impact on larger security issues. Quoting a Southern African Tswana proverb stating that ‘a woman has no tribe’, Nagel postulates that it might also be true that a woman has no nation (1998). Unless women play the familiar supporting role of mother or wife, they are often left out of the masculine institutions of the state. As a result, nation does not ‘feel’ the same for women as it does for men (Nagel, 1998: 261). In Japan and South Korea, ‘national interests’ represented the interests of privileged men, and ‘national security’ did not eliminate the physical, economic, legal and social insecurity of the prostitutes. Although the South Korean government labelled the prostitutes ‘personal ambassadors’ who sold their sex as a patriotic act, most of these women felt used and betrayed by the US and Korean authorities (Moon, 1997: 52). In order to challenge the hegemonic definitions of national security that are designed to include only those who possess substantial resources, it is imperative that we expand our concept of national identity to respect a variety of political actors. After all, the prostitutes — seemingly unimportant actors in the eyes of Realists — have played a major role in the most paramount goal of every sovereign state, i.e. national security. We also saw that states use different groups and classes to pursue national interest. Last, but not least, is the hypocrisy of the states; although prostitution is illegal in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, the governments of these states have actively been engaged in supporting prostitution geared toward servicing the US troops. Failure to recognize these women as political actors precludes us from seeing the many complex ways that women are manipulated and used to serve the interests of nationalist projects.


Although, the United States tries to combat prostitution, it will never end as long as troops remain in South Korea.
Brian Parsons, J.D. Candidate at Northwestern University School of Law; B.A. in Communication , 5/06, “Significant steps or empty rhetoric? Current efforts by the United States to Combat Sexual Trafficking near Military bases”, http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/jihr/v4/n3/5/?title=Significant+Steps+or+Empty+Rhetoric%3F+Current+Efforts+by+the+United+States%0D%0Ato+Combat+Sexual+Trafficking+near+Military+Bases&author=Brian+Parsons&pagination=&startpage=&endpage=&issueTitle=&issueDate=May+2006&vol=4&n=3&jTitle=Northwestern+University+Journal+of+International+Human+Rights&cite
Even as the U.S. attempts to educate the Service members about the detrimental effects of human trafficking, the general attitude that many servicemen hold towards prostitutes may be the most significant obstacle the U.S. will face. The U.S. military has a long history of allowing and even encouraging soldiers serving abroad to patronize prostitutes.144 Now that the military has recognized that these activities often support sexual trafficking and help to undermine their mission, it has taken steps to stop this practice. Encouraging reports out of Korea indicate that the United States has prosecuted nearly 400 U.S. Service members stationed in Korea for actions relating to prostitution during 2004 and more than 800 areas known for ties to prostitution have been designated as off-limits to soldiers.145 However, after allowing this activity to continue for so long, the military will likely encounter great difficulty changing a culture that has historically permitted soldiers to patronize prostitutes. ¶ 42 For example, troops stationed in countries where prostitution is not illegal are already voicing their displeasure over the recent changes to the MCM.146 Some, such as Army Sgt. Adam Z. Pastor, who serves on a German base that is situated near a thriving red light district, expressed a belief that not all instances of prostitution are linked with sex trafficking when he stated that "[i]t would be different if it were some third-world country that had no jobs and no opportunity, and women were forced into it."147 Even some soldiers who do not visit prostitutes themselves assert that "[i]t's none of [the military's] business what soldiers do off base. If a soldier wants to have sex with a prostitute and ruin his life that's his problem, not the military's."148 Unfortunately, these opinions merely serve to highlight the lack of understanding by servicemen about the extent of the problem of human trafficking. Although they may not think that any of these women were "forced into it," the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has reported that the majority of women "trafficked for the sex industry are trafficked to large cities, vacation and tourist areas, and areas near military bases in Europe."149 ¶ 43 This attitude towards the act of patronizing a prostitute could also hinder enforcement of the proposed changes. Military officers who have been consistently lax in cracking down on soldiers who solicit prostitutes will more than likely continue to do so. Further, it may not be very likely that soldiers who are brought up on charges will face the maximum penalty of a dishonorable discharge.150 Military courts that require a two-thirds vote or greater for a court-martial likely would give great weight to whether the offense was committed in a country where prostitution is legal.151 ¶ 44 There is also evidence that the current organizational culture of the military may be responsible for a less than comprehensive effort to implement the zero-tolerance policy promulgated by the Department of Defense. Department of Defense officials who worked closely with the reports on trafficking questioned the veracity of these reports, commenting that those responsible for the Phase 2 report would "wash this report; they are washing the Korea report."152 Similarly disturbing is the methodology employed by the Inspector General investigators doing research for these reports. For example, meetings on the bases would typically begin with closed-ended questions such as "Do you have any problems with trafficking here?"153 The person being interviewed would unsurprisingly answer that there was no trafficking problem, creating a situation in which evidence of trafficking would literally have to "fall in the laps" of the inspectors for them to have any chance of uncovering it.154 These problems highlight a larger cultural reality of the military, which makes strong statements about fighting trafficking while at the same time downplaying the significance of the problem.